My history with Oasis: Act One

July 20, 2007 | In Music | No Comments

Act one: Discovery

It was November 1995 when I first learned about this british rock band called Oasis. One afternoon after school I turned on Mtv, a not so rare event at the time, when a video that was different from anything I had seen before came on.

The video, shot in black and white, had its own look and feel. The music was acoustic and started at the drop of a record. The video was for a song called “Wonderwall.”

At the time my musical tastes were relatively simple. I was interested in rock and more pop style music, I was 15 at the time, but once this video came on I suddenly became more interested in music.

It would take a couple viewings of the video before I finally broke down and decided I was going to buy this album “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” in hopes that the rest of it would be as good as what I had experienced in the video.

It was a trip to the grocery store in Iowa City with my Mom that made that moment possible. A Best Buy store was near by so while my mom shopped, I decided to check out what they had in the music section. In the back of my mind I was looking for the Oasis album, but out loud I was just going to look. The album was sitting on an end cap, almost at the front of the store when I found it.

At the time I had limited funds, but luckily I had enough to spend on the CD. I quickly picked it up and met my mom out side a few minutes later.

It wasn’t but a few minutes after I returned home that I had the CD in the player. I wasn’t sure what to expect but was welcomed with a “Hello” the opening track to the album. A romping toe tapper – again like nothing I had really experienced before. This was the first album that ever made me feel like I had good taste in music. Great taste mind you.

Within weeks the album had replaced much of the music I was listening to prior to it. “Morning Glory” opened my eyes to a whole world of music outside of Boyz II Men of Weezer (a band I still love today, but still).

It wasn’t until a conversation with a friend where I asked if he had heard of Oasis, that I learned there was another album out there to dive into. “Definitely Maybe,” the first album from Oasis was waiting for me to discover and thanks to my friend I knew it a few weeks into my fascination with the band.

A trip to an indie record store in town led to me picking up the album. I had the chance to taste test it in store before I bought it. It wasn’t but a few seconds into “Rock and Roll Star” that I knew I was putting my eggs in the right basket with this band. Before I bought it, the clerk asked if I realized this wasn’t the album with “Wonderwall” on it, of course I did – after all I had THAT album already.

Only a few weeks into my interest in Oasis, I was already annoying friends and family with constant discussion about the songs that were quickly changing my life. “Hey have you heard this song?”

As 1996 quickly approached my love for the band was about to explode in no small part thanks to an Internet connection to the house…

Coming soon – Act two: The world wide wonderweb (or how our hero went from just owning two albums to having all the singles and video)